MDL Specification Released

 

The Material Definition Language (MDL) Spec 1.1 has been released.

Currently used in iray, MDL is coming to mental ray 3.13 in less than a year’s time. Flexible layer-able components with cross compatibility between iray and mental ray will be a reality. Allowing you to render scenes based on your preference rather than a limitation in time to transfer materials and looks between them.

This also opens up many other doors to improved flexible rendering in mental ray using the workflow introduced by the Layering Library (MILA)

New GI in mental ray directions

 

If you haven’t had a chance to take a look at the new GI that is accelerated on the GPU, you can get a preview of the prototype here and here. ARC is also interested in your feedback, look here.

Also, if you haven’t had a chance to wander the ARC forums, here’s a little tidbit from Steffen, the project manager for mental ray about the future of Global Illumination in mental ray.

Going forward, what is now called “GI GPU” will be incorporated into a general new GI workflow in mental ray that can be GPU accelerated. It is supposed to be the modern replacement for the collection of various older GI techniques, like FG Map, Irradiance Particles and Importons, and GI Photons. If you have a capable GPU then the compute time can be dramatically reduced.

This means a single GI solution for all your needs in mental ray without the need to combine or tune other options to get the best result. Additionally it will take advantage of an NVIDIA GPU on your machine (if you have one) to drastically decrease your render times locally and/or a similarly equipped render farm.